There is a class system in The Stick of Truth, but it’s really very barebones. You can be a Fighter, Mage, Thief or a Jew. The only thing these classes effect, however, is your appearance early on in the game, and your special skills. Weapons and armor can be used freely between all classes with no real restrictions. So if you want to play a heavy armor wearing sword swinging battle mage, you can. In terms of customization, that’s great, but in terms of making the classes actually mean something, it isn’t.

But hey, you aren’t looking for deep class mechanics in a South Park game. You are looking for South Park, and this game has oodles of it. There are the Goth Kids, Lemmiwinks, the gingers, the underpants gnomes, eight bit Canada, the raisins girls, anal probing aliens, and most notably, actual references to actual real world people. You’ll see Celine Dion, Al Gore, and David Hasselhoff all make appearances. Facebook is a certain gameplay mechanic and the iPhone is a serious piece of one of the game’s many quests. Heck, you even get to go on a trek to Taco Bell at one point. The game pulls no punches and references real life people, places, and things and relies on the parody and satire protection of Free Use to get through. It’s gutsy, and frankly I have no idea how they aren’t getting sued.

But since they aren’t getting sued, you should probably play this game. If you like South Park you will love The Stick of Truth, plain and simple. It feels like you are marathoning the show, and marathon you will. It’s so hard to put this game down. When I first picked it up, I found myself, literally, playing it for seven hours straight. I just couldn’t get enough of it. When I found myself replaying scenes from the game in my head late at night, I decided to play instead of sleep. I beat The Stick of Truth, in a little over two days, and that’s not because the game is short. It’s because it instantly hooked me. This may be the best licensed game ever produced, and it’s certainly the best South Park game we have ever seen.

ByAngelo M. D'Argenio
Contributing Writer
Date: March 4, 2014

RATING OUT OF 5

RATING DESCRIPTION

4.9

GraphicsIt looks just like the show and aside from some slowdown can barely be told apart.

4.5

ControlIt’s an RPG so the controls are what you would expect. Walk, search, open the menu, it’s all basic here.